Arizona’s Democrat Attorney General, Kris Mayes, launched an investigation into a media-generated hoax about former President Donald Trump allegedly threatening Liz Cheney with death.

Critics immediately called the probe election interference. “Total abuse of office and election interference,” Senior Writer at RealClearInvestigations Mark Hemingway posted on X.

“The perfect illustration of the intersection of media disinfo, political opportunism, & abuse of investigative power, all in service of election influence,” said Jerry Dunleavy IV, ex-senior investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee. 

The Harris campaign and its media allies claim Trump called for guns to be pointed at Liz Cheney, but rather than speaking about executing Cheney, Trump’s remarks in Glendale were about her willingness to send Americans to die in foreign wars.

“They’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying Oh gee, let’s send 10,000 troops into the mouths of the enemy,” Trump said. “Let’s put Liz Cheney with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it when the guns are trained on her face.”

Mayes told “Sunday Square Off” on Friday that she “already asked my criminal division chief to start looking at that statement, analyzing it for whether it qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s laws.”

“I’m not prepared now to say whether it was or it wasn’t, but it is not helpful as we prepare for our election and as we try to make sure that we keep the peace at our polling places and in our state,” she added.

On Truth Social, Trump ripped the hoax.

“All I’m saying about Liz Cheney is that she is a War Hawk, and a dumb one at that, but she wouldn’t have ‘the guts’ to fight herself,” Trump said Friday:

It’s easy for her to talk, sitting far from where the death scenes take place, but put a gun in her hand, and let her go fight, and she’ll say, “No thanks!” Her father decimated the Middle East, and other places, and got rich by doing so. He’s caused plenty of DEATH, and probably never even gave it a thought. That’s not what we want running our Country!

Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, took the opportunity to tell the media that Trump “increased his violent rhetoric … about political opponents and in great detail suggested rifles should be trained on former Rep. Liz Cheney.”

“This must be disqualifying,” Harris claimed. “Rep. Cheney is a true patriot.”

Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.